


Hightower

by beetle



Category: Original Work
Genre: Adventure & Romance, Angst, Best Friends, Boys In Love, But becomes a Victorian, Civil War, Dynastic Succession, Failboats In Love, Feuds, First Love, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Future Fic, Gender Identity, Gender Issues, Genderfluid Character, Hegemony, Hopeful Ending, Identity Reveal, Inheritance, It starts as a Western, M/M, Mannerpunk, Marriage, Marriage Proposal, Modern Royalty, Monarchy, New Planets, No Aliens, Nonbinary Character, Not really the end though, Oligarchy, Other, POV First Person, Royalty, Secret Identity, Steampunk, Teen Angst, Teen Romance, This is not happening on Earth, This is the future, Trans Character, Trans Male Character, Travel, Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown, Western
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-23
Updated: 2016-04-23
Packaged: 2018-06-03 22:52:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6630298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beetle/pseuds/beetle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alexei Stanton and Ri Friendly's lives are pretty idyllic, if one can ignore the heat of Western summers. Enter a mysterious visitor with a life-altering ultimatum and the responsibilities of a lifetime, <i>from</i> a lifetime ago. Both teens must quickly decide where their loyalties lie, at last: East or West, childhood or adulthood, together or apart.</p><p>Written for the prompts: "Not a good idea," "Are You Crazy," and "Friends Helping Friends."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hightower

**Author's Note:**

> Notes/Warnings: Teenage--but NOT UNDERAGE--canoodling. Non-graphic. Nonbinary character living as male.

* * *

 

“I don’t think this is such a good idea, Ri,” I whispered as we crept ‘round the auxiliary water reclamators out back of his daddy’s barn. Visible clouds of dust, bleached bone-white by the seemingly ever-present sun, puffed up with our every step, creating a cloud which—in the clear, dry evening—could probably be seen for acres, at least, and might alert Ri’s daddy and/or his older brother Phillip to the fact that someone was out and about on the Friendly property. “I don’t think—”

“And _now_ ain’t the time to start, Suge. Leave the  _thinkin_ ’ to  _me_ ,” Ri said, grinning over his shoulder at me. I glared and stopped, crossing my arms. Ri stopped, too, pulling me into his arms for a kiss that I turned my face away from. Unfazed, he simply bussed me on my cheek instead of my lips.

“C’mon, ‘Lex-darlin’, don’t be like that. I was just jokin’.” He armed sweat off his forehead. The night was relatively cool, compared to day, which had been oppressively hot, as usual. One hundred fifteen in the shade, and it wasn’t even full-on  _summer_ , yet. Even after ten years I still dreaded the hellish Western summers. “ _You_ know how I get when I’m excited. I say all _kindsa_ stupid shit.”

“ _Just_  when you’re excited?” I huffed, and let myself be hugged tight. For a few moments, anyway. “Ugh, Ri, how come you’re so sweaty? It’s only ninety-five, ‘ccordin’ to the threedee.”

Ri laughed and let me go. But not far. “Just . . .  _excited_ , like I said . . . why? Ain’t you?”

“Well, _yeah_ ,” I admitted, blushing and taking his hand again. This time, instead of grinning he smiled. The  _sweet_  one . . . the first one he’d ever smiled at me, when we were both just second-form brats, and I was still new in town and shy because of that. I’d talked funny and I’d looked different than the other boys. Too pale and too scrawny-short. Too meek. But Ri hadn’t minded then and he didn’t now, even though he still swore that, despite the past ten years out West, I still sounded and looked like “some City-slicker from  _Back East_.”

What’s  _left_  of the Cities Back East.

“C’mon.” Ri’s usual grin flashed out again: white, white teeth in a dark, dark face. “The barn ain’t gettin’ any closer, and I just . . . I just _want you, real bad_ , is all. Don’t you want _me_?”

“More than anything,” I promised, and it was nothing more or less than absolute truth. Ri’s grin widened and his eyes, deeper than the night-sky, seemed to nonetheless _glow_.

Because I couldn’t resist the glow or grin—or the scary-delightful prospect of our sweaty-palmed plans for the evening, either—I let him tug me to his daddy’s empty barn, where the shadows lay so deep and velvety and cool. And when we laid down together in the hayloft it was for the very first time. . . .

Afterwards, Ri held me and we just rested in each other’s arms. We talked and talked for a while about the future, and our hopes and dreams, until yearning and desire brought us together again. Then, tired and blissed-out, we gazed up at the constellations through the open window in the barn roof, until we finally drifted off.

It was _perfect_.

#

 

“Wake up, Sleepin’ Beauty!”

I opened my eyes to see Phillip Friendly looming over me, smirking. Spooned up behind me, Ri grumbled and squeezed me closer, more asleep than awake.

Phillip nudged Ri’s foot with his own booted one. “You, too, Sleepin’ Ugly,” he said when Ri grumbled again and pressed his face to my sweaty nape, his hand sliding down my abdomen and between my legs. Or trying to.

“Uh—” I blushed, trying to wriggle away from Ri, who wasn’t having any of it, and just held me tighter. Phillip snorted and watched us struggle—me to get away while simultaneously trying to cover myself with the quilt, and him to pull me closer while tugging on the quilt as well, despite the already sweltering heat of the barn—still smirking. “Uh . . . please don’t tell your daddy about this, Phillip.”  _Or my Aunt Reva,_ went without saying.

Phillip snorted again. “Who d’ya think sent me to get you two?”

 _Now_  Ri was awake completely, scrambling to his feet and grabbing for his jeans. “Ah, fuck _me_ , daddy  _knows_?” he all but squeaked.

“‘Course. You two ain’t exactly sneaky, Riley. Make more noise than any three  _deliisk_ s during a matin’ flight.” Phillip laughed and glanced back at me, giving me a thrice-over that made me blush and pull the quilt more closely about me. Phillip’s smirk turned lazy and he kept staring at my covered chest until Ri, half-dressed and pulling on his t-shirt, noticed and stepped pointedly between his brother and me.

Finally, after what I can only assume was a stare-down, Phillip turned away, making for the loft ladder.

“Whatever. Woman from some City’s here to see you. She’s waitin’ in the livin’ room.”

“A _City_?” Ri glanced at me, worried, and I froze, mouthing:  _What did you do?_

 _Nothing!_  was the reply I got. Then Ri was turning back to his brother, who was waiting at the top of the ladder. “Someone from a City to see  _me_?”

Phillip’s dark eyes ticked from Ri, to me, then back when Ri took a step toward him. Ri may have been younger, but he was bigger. And meaner in a fight, too. “To see  _you_ , Sexy-‘Lexy.”

Then he was gone down the ladder with a wink and a laugh, before Ri could do more than snatch up his own left boot and take aim.

When Ri turned to look at me, he seemed scared . . . and excited.

“You ain’t do nothin’ either, right?”

I shook my head  _no_.

“Welp, then,” Ri knelt in front of me, took my hands, and kissed them tenderly. His own were shaking a little. “Welp, then, we ain’t got nothin’ to worry ‘bout, I s’pose. Still, an’ all . . . I wonder what she wants with  _you_.”

Thinking of my early childhood Back East—before the internecine Feuds really began to proliferate and spread beyond what the Twelve Cities could control—and the circumstances under which I’d been taken ( _smuggled_  is more like it) out of Hightower and the Eastern Hegemony, I shuddered, suddenly cold in spite of the hot, heavy, still air.

Ri frowned and wrapped his arms around me. “What’s wrong, Suge?”

“Nothing,” I lied, shakily, wondering if  _they’d_ —whoever  _they_  were—finally found me . . . after all this time and distance. “Let’s go see a lady from Back East, huh?”

#

 

“I can’t believe it!” Ri exclaimed as we trudged across his daddy’s acreage from barn to rambling old farmhouse.

Ri kept having to stop and wait for me, or—more often—he’d come back to walk with me.

Little did he know I thought I was trudging to, at best, my own imprisonment. At worst . . . I didn’t even want to imagine.

Ri swung my hand excitedly, like a child. “Hot  _damn_! Somebody from one of the Twelve Cities! Just like you were, huh?”

“Yeah,” I said, smiling limply in the face of his innocent anticipation. “Just like me.”

#

 

The floorboards creaked under foot as we stepped in from the heat of the day, to the marginally cooler kitchen. Phillip was drinking synth-milk straight from the container, and ignored Ri and me as we crossed the room.

I kept dragging my feet and  _Ri_  kept shooting me confused looks. Finally, halfway down the hall, he stopped and whispered: “Is somethin’ up?”

“Let’s run away!” I whispered back, tugging on his hand and turning back toward the kitchen. When he didn’t budge, I looked around. He was gaping.

“Are you  _crazy_?”

I sighed. “Remember how, when we were little, we were gonna run off and join the Corps? I’ve been thinking, you know, that that isn’t such a bad idea. . . .”

“Lex-baby, I—”

“We c’n hear you two hissin’ back ‘n’ forth like a coupla riled vipers,” Ri’s daddy called from the living room, his voice low like Ri’s, but unlike Ri’s—and quite unlike their last name—not friendly. And why should it be? Someone from the damned  _Cities_  had taken time out of their precious Feuds and mini-wars to come thousands of miles to see his son and his son’s . . . friend.

“C’mon, Suge, before the old man blows a gasket,” Ri murmured, leaning in to kiss me quick and teasing.

“But—”

Ri dragged me into his living room, where his father and Aunt Reva sat on the couch and, sitting in an armchair across from them, in full field-dress, was—

“Commander Friar!” I exclaimed, the appellation falling from my lips as if I’d last said it yesterday. The past decade fell away from me as Commander Theya Friar stood smartly, bowed to me with grave deference, then dropped gracefully to her left knee . . . perfectly pin-neat in her blue-and-green uniform and polished black boots. Her dark hair, shot through with grey and white, was gathered in a braid that hung down her back.

“My liege,” she said gravely, head lowered but eyes on me, as if waiting for something. Meanwhile, I could feel Ri’s surprised gaze on me, too . . . not to mention everyone else’s. “I bring news.”

“Uh,” I said, then, out of my childhood memories came a vivid one: my mother, in her Seat of Office while speaking to this woman, this . . . Commander of Hightower’s militia. I knew exactly what Theya Friar was waiting for, and it sprang to my lips and out, unbidden. “R-rise and report, Commander.”

Commander Friar stood smoothly, but with a heavy sigh. Her face was grim and grief-torn.

“They are dead, my liege,” she said, her voice catching as a tear rolled down her cheek. That single tear rocked me more than anything I’d ever seen. People like Theya Friar  _never_  shed tears. At least not where others can bear witness. “All of them: your mother, Oligarch Livia Hightower, may the Creator keep her noble spirit; her youngest brother, Lord-Regent Alexei Hightower, the last of your bloodline to fall, disappeared a fortnight past; before him, your other uncles and kin. Even your father, Lord-Consort Garren, in his grief, followed your mother to the Eternal Beyond. _You_ are the last Scion . . . all that remains of the Tower Oligarchy, now. The Great Tower by the Sea stands empty in its grief. But it waits, with hope, for its rightful heir to return. _The City of Hightower_ —and with us, the entire Eastern Hegemony—waits with hope for _your return_.”

Ri’s hand dropped away from my own as I stared and stared at Commander Friar’s epaulets. There were many. “‘Lex? Suge, what’s she  _talkin’_  ‘bout?”

“Yeah—what the actual  _fuck_?” came from the entryway behind Ri and me. But everyone ignored Phillip in favor of watching  _me_ , and I. . . .

I turned and bolted past Phillip, back down the hall and out the kitchen door.

#

 

I’d been lying in the loft of the barn, on my back on the quilt—which’d smelled of hay and still, faintly, of sex—right under the window. The heat had been such that I’d quickly grown sleepy and closed my eyes. When I opened them again, it was because someone touched my face.

I bolted up, dizzy and headachy, and Ri pulled me into his arms, murmuring that it was alright, that it was just him. I was shaking and clammy, broken out in a cold sweat. I didn’t remember what I’d been dreaming but I knew it hadn’t been sweet.

Ri held me till I stopped shaking, then sat back to look at me. The loft was dim and shadowed, meaning the sun was on the wester, and in this dearth of light, Ri looked eerily like his father, stern and dour.

“Is it true, then?” he asked softly, his dark eyes shining and unreadable. “What that City-soldier said?”

I nodded once, slowly. “Yes. All of it. Commander Theya Friar never lies.”

Sighing, Ri looked up, running a hand over his close-cropped hair. “Who  _is_  she? Who’re  _you_?”

His eyes, when he looked at me again, were accusing and I couldn’t meet them for long.

“I . . . I’m just  _me_ , Ri . . . just  _Lex_. That’s all,” I said pleadingly, my voice cracking up into registers I’d ruthlessly trained out of it over the course of puberty. Ri’s eyes hardened.

“But that _ain’t_ all, is it? You’re more’n  _just Alexei Stanton_ , ‘ccordin’ to  _her_ ,” he said bitterly, and I winced . . . but nodded again. “So,  _who are you_?”

It took a little while, but I met Ri’s eyes squarely. “I am . . . was . . . _am_ Scion Olivia Alexia Garrenia Andreyevna Barrera Godineau Hightower. Heir to the Tower and High Seat of the First City of the East. Oligarch-presumptive of Hightower _and_ of the Eastern Hegemony, as of . . . whenever my Uncle Alex was executed or assassinated or murdered because of the _fucking Feuds_ ,” I gritted out, and between one blink and the next, tears were running down my face and I was sobbing.

After a few seconds that felt like eternities, Ri’s arms slowly came around me and he held me. He called me  _my ‘Lexy_  and  _sugar_  and  _darlin’_. . . all the pet names that’d so used to annoy me until they hadn’t, anymore.

And I . . . I just wept. For my mother and father, for my uncles and kin, for my long-lost but never forgotten Hightower-by-the-Sea.

But most of all, I wept for myself.

#

 

“So . . . what happens, now?”

I shifted in Ri’s strong arms but didn’t move my face from where it rested over his heart. The beat was strong and slow and comforting. I sighed and burrowed closer to it, and deeper into Ri and the thick quilt we laid on.

“I don’t _know_ what happens,” I whispered to his heart. “I know Commander Friar expects me to go back with her, and she’s right to. There can’t  _not_  be an Oligarch. For as long as there’s _been_ a City of Hightower, the Tower Dynasty has protected and defended that City, and the Hegemony that looks to her for leadership and stability. If the Tower and the High Seat remain empty . . . the City will fall, and with her, perhaps the entire Hegemony. And while Oligarchic and Hegemonic rule leaves a _lot_ to be desired for a lot of people . . . I shudder to think of what would fill the vacuum should they be dismantled during these Feuds. There _must_ be an Oligarch in the Tower, Riley. I _dare not let it_ remain empty for long.”

“ _Fuck_.” Ri sighed, too, running his hand through my hair. “Hey, why can’t your  _Auntie Reva_  be the Oligarch?”

“Because _she’s_ not a Hightower, by blood or marriage. She was chief of my mother’s personal security. When the Feuds between the Cities began to get . . . bloody—when it seemed civil war was about to be declared—my mother had Captain Charris smuggle me out of Hightower and take me west. Ultimately, Captain Bella Charris became _Reva Stanton_ and Scion Olivia-Alexia-etc., became _Alexei Stanton_.” I drummed my fingertips lightly on Ri’s abdomen. “She only risked letting me use  _Alexei_ , my great-grandfather’s and my favorite uncle’s name, because it sounded so close to my second given name. To _Alexia_. That I’d thus respond to it more naturally than _Floyd_ or _Danion_ , or something like that.”

Ri laughed suddenly and I looked up at his face. In the golden, westering light coming in through the barn window, he was beautiful: an onyx god whom I rightfully worshipped and adored. “Well, I guess that makes sense. An’ I always wondered if your Auntie was ex-military or somethin’.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” I said, thinking of the day she’d taught me to not only make my own bed—something young Olivia-Alexia Hightower had  _never_  done or _had_ to do—but to make it with military corners.

Smiling, I briefly, wistfully remembered the past ten years with _Aunt Reva_ , who was, despite the circumstantial resemblance, quite a different being than _Captain Bella Charris_. . . .

“So . . . you’re goin’.”

I sighed again, laying my head back over his heart. “I have to. If I can help, even by being a figure-head or placeholder for some future Hightower Scion—or even if a Scion of a different dynasty or City legally assumes the Tower and Seat upon my death—I have to _try_. I  _want_  to try,” I admitted. Ri blinked and looked away.

“Don’t suppose you’d want comp’ny, out there in Hightower?” he mumbled so quietly I could barely hear him. But hear I did, and found myself looking back up at him, gaping, shocked beyond all other feelings. Then Ri met my eyes, his own determined and steady. “I mean, friends help friends, right?”

That hit me like a hammer in the heart, and before I could even think about it I was sitting up, saying: “Don’t put yourself out on my account, _friend_. I can handle Hightower a-and the goddamn Hegemony, _all by my lonesome!_ So, don’t let _me_ take _you_ away from whatever  _really_  matters to you!”

“Ah, I didn’t mean it like—aw, c’mon, darlin’, don’t—” Ri sat up and grabbed me before I could stand up, and wouldn’t let me go. And I couldn’t break free of his effortless iron-grip. I knew from experience, so I didn’t even try.

“Let go of me.”

“No.”

“Let me  _go_ , Riley!”

“Never.” I looked over into his eyes and they were more determined than ever—more  _solemn_  than I’d ever seen them. “Wouldn’t be right to let you just leave, not without back-up. ‘Side from that . . . I l-love you too much to let you go off somewhere _without_ me. ‘ _Specially_ when I might never see you ‘gain if I did.”

I frowned, my heart sinking even as it warmed and expanded. “Not . . .  _never_ , Ri. _Never_ never.”

“I think it might be. ‘Course, it would.” Ri said ruefully. “You’re _royalty_ , Lex—your blood’s bluer than a summer sky! And you’re smart and _beautiful_ and funny and the _best_ person I know. You’re _amazin’_ and I love you _so much_ , that the only thing that hurts more’n my heart bein’ so full _all the time_ , is the thought of you bein’ somewhere _I’m not_. Even _thinkin’_ about losin’ you scares the _life_ outta me, and that’s _exactly_ what’ll happen if I let you leave without me. You’ll _never_ come back. Why’d _anybody_ in their right damn mind come back  _here_  when they could be livin’ the life in Hightower or any one of the Twelve?”

Blinking back tears of joy and heartache—it wasn’t every day even a _Hightower_ got everything he’d ever wanted, then immediately had to let it all go again and walk away . . . possibly forever—I reached out, brushing my fingers across Ri’s cheek and he shivered. “If they had a friend like  _you_  waiting for them here, Ri Friendly, I’d say _anybody_ would.” I smiled and Ri returned it, small and sweet, and kissed me.

“You’re more’n my  _friend_ , Alexei Stanton, and always have been. And that’s the plain truth of it. But  _boyfriend_  seems like such a silly, _small_ word for what you  _really are_  to me. It don’t quite fit, huh?” Ri searched my eyes, his own still solemn, and nervous bordering on frightened. “Boy-I-wanna-spend-the- _rest_ -of-my-life-with sorta fits. Buuuuuut . . . that’s kind of a mouthful. I think I’d like . . . _h-husband_  a whole lot better.”

My eyes widened until it felt as if they’d fall out of their sockets. “Ri . . . what’re you  _saying_?”

Ri’s smile turned into a grin and he got up on one knee and took my hand.

“Alexei Stant— _Hightower_ , I’m askin’ you to _marry me_. Hear me out,” he went on before I could say anything. Not that I would have, shocked as I was, once more. “I ain’t got much to give you. Nothin’ you can’t already get for yourself, Mr. Scion. ‘Cept . . . ‘cept for _all of me_. If all of me’s somethin’ you might want, then I’mma be in your corner every moment of every day. _Forever_. No matter what. I’ll love you even if you stop existin’ before I do. And I won’t _stop_ lovin’ you _till_ I don’t exist. A-and I figure: what the Hell? You’re eighteen. I’m seventeen and three-quarters. We’re ‘ _fficially_ a-dults—we c’n smoke, drink, fight in a war, vote—rule Hegemonies—and _get married_ , if we _wanna_.  _If_  we wanna. . . .”

And it took me a few seconds to realize Ri had tossed the ball into my court. By the time I did, he was speaking again, anxiously: “Well? Uh, what d’ya say, Suge? Don’ leave me hangin’.”

Uncertain of what was going to come out, I opened my mouth to speak. . . .

#

 

I sat, pensive and brooding, in a sumptuous private car on the express hover-tran to Verdant, the last major Western City-state before the smaller, non-Hegemony, Midland City-states began. By my lonesome, but for Aunt Reva— _Captain Charris_ —and Commander Friar.

I was wearing the only suit I owned—the same murky-dark gray as my eyes, and boxy enough that I looked less like a scarecrow-boy and more like a very slim man—and which I’d last worn in the changing room at _Cintron’s Select_ , just before Aunt Reva had bought it.

Out the window, scenery as dry and arid as any back home—back in the small, dusty town that’d  _become_  my home for going on eleven years—rocketed by. Tears welled up in my eyes for another home, lost to me. The second in a decade. I didn’t even think to reach for my periwinkle pocket-square.

 _Truly, there is an art to losing_ , I realized. And despite popular opinion, it was _extremely_ difficult to master. I doubted I ever would.

“Don’t worry, Alex— _Scion Hightower_ . . . you’ll be back, someday,” Captain Charris murmured from the opposite seat. I glanced at her, my erstwhile aunt, and tried to not think of all I’d lost—all I’d  _given up_ —and smiled limply. Next to her, Commander Friar merely nodded stoically, her weathered face impassive but for her fierce, shining eyes.

Just then the door to our private car opened and in strode my husband of one day . . . give or take a few hours.

Lord-Consort Riley Hightower looked mildly uncomfortable but _very_ dapper in his nicest blue suit, and he was fiddling with the simple gold band on his ring finger. But his eyes lit up when they landed on me and he came to sit by my side, kissing my cheek and taking my hand.

My smile firmed up and became genuine. I thought of all that I had  _gained_  and the future spread before me like uncharted territory. There was a City—a Hegemony—a _world_ to win. To _save_. And only one way to find out if _this_ Hightower Scion was up to that challenge.

Next to me, my husband stroked the matching gold band on _my_ ring finger until I was practically purring with contentment. In three more hours, we’d reach the Western City of Verdant, and beyond _that_. . . .

Beyond that— _far_ beyond—where the eastern edge of the Great Continent met the Sundering Sea; where the ancient Tower of my forebears stood as an eternal symbol and sentry; and where the empty, uneasy High Seat of the Eastern Hegemony awaited its assumption by the very last of the Hightower Oligarchy . . . _there_ was my City. My _charge_.

 _My Hightower_.

**Author's Note:**

> Well? Thinking of turning this into a YA novel. Not really sure if this piece is the first chapter or the final one--could be either, if you look at it a certain way. So suggestions, opinions, advice, feedback, and concrit would be lovely. Which would you rather see more of: Backstory of Lexy and Ri's childhood and their fumbling toward a deepening of their relationship? Or the life and intrigues of living in and ruling the greatest City in the East?
> 
> Both? Is what I've got so far a middle chapter?
> 
> Argh! Confusion!
> 
> So, help--and, if you're of a mind, [follow me on The Tumbles](http://beetle-ships-it-all.tumblr.com).


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